Feeling Judgy?
By Derri Smith, Founder
I was with a human trafficking survivor this morning when she shared her story anonymously in an interview. (I’ll call her Donna here.) I’ve known hundreds of human trafficking survivors, and Donna’s story was not unusual. Still, it broke my heart.
Her addicted mom brought men home to pay for her habit. Some of those men abused her child. By 14, mom introduced Donna to crack and started selling her for sex to feed both their habits. A trafficker saw vulnerable prey and soon this girl was trapped in a cycle of violence, coercion, and survival. Trafficked.
When we hear the word prostitute, it is so easy to feel judgy. “Other than me.” “Can’t imagine being.” But what choices might we have made? What options might we have seen if we were dealt this hand? This child, like too many others, was born into an Alice in Wonderland world where her unimaginable existence seemed normal to her, because it was all she knew.
Eventually, weary of the nightmare, Donna escaped her trafficker and went on the streets prostituting herself for a season. “What?!” we think. “Why would she choose to do that?” But, is it really a choice when there are no visible options?
When Donna entered our program, like many others, she threw her arms around us and thanked us for saving her. NOT. She lashed out, was obnoxious, angry and disrespectful. (Feeling judgy?) She’d never known someone who genuinely cared about her, so it had to be fake. She just knew we would reject her once we understood who she really was, so why drag out the process...just get the rejection over with, she reasoned. (Two years later, after never rejecting her—then Donna’s gratitude showed up.)
When I have a bad day and speak thoughtlessly, or binge on three…five…ten donuts, or share my negative opinion of someone to a third party— is so easy for me to extend grace to myself. To understand my rationalizations. “I’m only human! I’m trying to do better.” In actuality, God is continually changing me into someone who looks more like Jesus. Taking the long view of where I am going and extending grace every step of the journey. I’m so glad for that.
Why is it so much easier to extend grace to ourselves than to do so for someone else who isn’t making the choices we think they should or changing as quickly as we think they should?
At End Slavery Tennessee, when someone slips up, we celebrate how far they’ve come, not how long it took them to get there. We recognize that they’ve faced incredible trauma that affects their impulses, decisions, trust levels and virtually everything else about their lives, even the ability to get a good night’s sleep. We recognize that we have no idea what decisions we’d have made if we’d been in shoes like Donna had to walk in (and that likely we wouldn’t have done as well as her.)
Donna told the interviewer that our ‘hanging in there’ and not giving up on her is what made the difference that led to recovery from addiction and facing and coping with her trauma. Today, she has a job with another nonprofit, wanting to give back to others because she has been given so much, herself. Because she doesn’t want the pain she went through to be wasted.
There are lessons there for us all.